Another really nice morning, chilly but sunny and no wind. The wind will arrive a bit later and with it it will bring clouds and perhaps some rain as well. Works good for me since I’m planning to sow winter lettuce. It can’t germinate when it is warm weather and can live long in autumn even after frost. It is a bit more bitter in the taste though.

We are now not allowed to throw clothes in the normal garbage bin, all clothes must be recycled. I can’t say I’m against it but it does give some problems because even though we have one of the most advanced cloth sorting machines in the world they still can’t use it. The problem is, if I understand it right, that there’s a sort of fibre it can’t sort away (some kind of nylon relative I think) so instead we’re sending our clothes to Lithuania where they sort it by hand. If anything is of good quality they’ll sell it but if it’s bad they burn it instead. Well that is something we could have done ourselves.  What to do with an old stuffed blanket? have no idea to be honest, it’s more or less just stuffing left and is that counted as cloth fibres? Have no idea so now I have two big sacks I’ll have to have in the wood shed until I can figure that out 🙂 🙂 🙂

We met our new neighbours on our morning walk yesterday. I’m glad to say that they like both my dogs 🙂 🙂 Malkolm would be a given since he can behave somewhat but it can’t be easy to meet a dog that screams like insane and pulls the leash so hard that I almost lost my balance 🙂 🙂 🙂 But perhaps what’s more important is that their tiny little white dog actually loves both Alma and Malkolm, sh’e tiny but still throws herself towards them 🙂

I let the kitchen door stay open as soon as the sun shines towards it so all the animals can go in and out as they please. Malkolm has a tendency to jump over the fence to get down to the swamp behind the dog yard but now I have a weapon I use against him 🙂 As soon as I notice that he’s gone I just shout out “where’s the kitten?” Takes only a few seconds before he’s back and worries if he can’t find her 🙂 🙂 🙂 So far she hasn’t wandered off especially far though, just around the cottage and the entrance stairs 🙂 🙂 I even forgot to check where she was yesterday when I closed the kitchen door for an hour. As soon as I opened it again she came running in 🙂

I’ve kept on working (don’t like to call it working when it is something I enjoy doing and for free 🙂 ) in the garden. The aching isn’t that bad afterwords as I thought it would be 🙂 Ok it hurts in the legs and my back but it is sort of a good pain. Yesterday when I was about to boil some potatoes for dinner I found a few sprouts that I’ll plant in pots until it is time to bring them out to the vegetable garden or plant them in buckets or big pots. It takes a bit longer for them to grow new potatoes but they usually give a few but big potatoes.

I have a plum tree that I only planted so that my former neighbours would get plums on their tree but since my recent neighbours took that tree down I really have no use or joy in keeping mine. It just gives a few plums each year and at least half starts to mould already on the branches. So yesterday I debarked it close to the ground about 20 cm (8 inches) wide. That stops any water and nutrition to go up to the top of the tree and will also stop the tree from giving loads of root shoots. It’ll have to stay like this for two years now, if I cut it down before that those shoots will pop up everywhere and I already have enough of shoots in my garden as it is. It will look sad but I think I’ll plants a fast growing clematis there this summer so it’ll cover the tree next summer.

It is time to open the kitchen door and have a cup of tea while sitting on the kitchen stairs 🙂

Have a great day!